Objectivity. Polity Press, 2015. Introduction and Table of Contents

Church, Communication and Culture, 2019

Objectivity weakly revisited' could be the synthesis of this huge effort to rehabilitate objectivity; an effort made by Steven Maras, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Sidney on 2013, a very few years before the now almost burned-out debate on fake news and post-truth had ignited. The book has been published in the collection of 'Key Concepts in Journalism' of Polity Press, a well-known publisher of valuable and critical books regarding journalistic and media issues. The structure of Maras' book is very clear, especially in its first part. I will summarize it briefly: It opens with the history of objectivity as a journalistic paradigm and/or ethical rule, until it was attacked and rejected in the 90sfor example, by Mindich in 1998and later on (Chapter 1). Then, in Chapter 2, the author presents the main objections to the notion of objectivity, objections well-articulated and displayed in an apparently irrefutable way. In Chapter 3, the author goes into to the philosophical sources of the debate, that is to the diverse epistemologies underlying the contrasting versions of the problem and their correlative answers: the model of correspondence and coherence, empiricism, positivism, pragmatism, realism, naturalism and postmodernism. Although Maras' book is not a book on the history of epistemology, his account is good enough … for the theories of knowledge of the Enlightenment. This is, in my view, the main objection to the book, as it is the missing point of any Modern attempt to establish a sound basis for connecting journalists' work with the world outside, if those attempts want to avoid arbitrarily falling into limitless subjective points of view, or even into more limited overarching 'narratives', or on the other hand to giving up to the changeable consensual truth imposed by the tyranny of the majority. Maras goes back no further than the Enlightenment. Moreover, he even forgets to present the origin of the fact/value divide: it was Hume's epistemology, whose defining division is between isjudgments and ought-judgments that shaped the terms of the debate from then on. Needless to say, the great father of the Modern objective-subjective epistemological breakfor there are other pre-Modern versions of the break, such as medieval nominalism against realism-is also missing: Descartes, whose cogito ergo sum is the turning point in the Copernican revolution in the theory of knowledge of Modern times. Chapter 4 offers the grounds on which objectivity has been defended, poorly defended as the title clearly shows: 'has been defended'. The chapter mirrors the previous one and echoes also the very same deficiencies. In my view, the conclusion of this chapter could have also been the conclusion of the book: 'What is evident [this is after his account of the arguments in favor of objectivity, arguments whose effectiveness the author does not measure] is that any simple dismissal of objectivity as impossible has been complicated. Objectivity needs not to be tied to an idea of a reality that exists independent of our mind' (emphasis is mine). Right, objectivity needs not to be tied so; truth does need it, desperately. The point is that objectivity was (and is) a poor surrogate in the place of truth. After

2013

In this text, we explore the guiding thread of the volume "Objectivity after Kant" by first discussing how the main question pertaining to transcendental objectivity arose at the Centre for Critical Philosophy. This exposition takes the form of a microhistorical genealogy, from which the main ideas pursued in the research conducted at this Centre can be distilled. In the second part, we briefly sketch how the different contributors have addressed this question. Its purpose is to facilitate the reader’s navigation through the variety of topics and perspectives addressed throughout this volume, and incite further reflection on the central issue it pursues.

Synthese

Several and repeated attempts have been made to say what objectivity consists of and why it should be pursued in research. In the first part of this paper two main strategies are singled out, sharing the assumption that there is a way (or different ways) objectivity can be thought of in the abstract (which does not mean without content), and that it can be instantiated in context—and in enough contexts to justify the abstract case. But not only is this assumption open to the objection that objectivity so conceived does not admit of one clear definition (even a disjunctive one) that is appropriate in many or most contexts where we intend the term to do its work. It also does not seem to pay specific attention to what actually constitutes a context of practice, when we think of objectivity in some relation to such context. The aim of this paper is to question how context works both as a mechanism of meaning formation for the concept of objectivity, and as a practical framework for pur...

The SAGE Handbook of the Philosophy of Social Science, 2011

At least since Weber, social scientists and philosophical commentators have been concerned with the role of values in social science and what the presence of such values mean for the objectivity of social science and the facticity of the knowledge produced. This essay will provide a brief historical overview of the debates over the role of values in science (focusing in particular on how various values influence—legitimately or not—the practice of social science). I will then assess where we stand on the values in science question and what that may mean for the objectivity of social science, given its particular dependences on values in its reasoning practices. The discussion of objectivity will be informed by the plurality of ways in which we employ the term, all of which reveal an underlying concern for some kind of trustworthiness or reliability. I will suggest that some roles for values in social science can pose a threat to its objectivity whereas others do not—and that some form of this view can be found in discussions throughout the past century. This assessment relies in part on a deflated account of what objectivity is—namely not a guarantee of a grasp of absolute truth but rather the best one can do at understanding the social world at a particular time. This deflation in the face of the particular challenges of social science, namely the fluidity of the social institutions under study and the reflexive character of knowledge on the social aspects of humanity, should be seen as no great loss, however. Indeed, if we take seriously Ludwig Fleck’s understanding of the nature of scientific facts, we can see both the importance of social facts and their inherent temporality. I will conclude the chapter with a brief look at one of the more intriguing recent developments concerning objectivity in social science, the arguments that the objectivity of science itself is underwritten by the social. Such an understanding places the social at the center of science, both descriptively and normatively.

2004

Austin Harrington’s book, Hermeneutic Dialogue and Social Science: A critique of Gadamer and Habermas, intends to present an account of debates on objectivity in the social sciences, in stressing the political and epistemological responsibility, in public spheres, to those who want to create a fairer understanding of societies and history, without demonizing natural enterprises or leaving social studies out of acute critical questioning.

Journal of the Philosophy of History 6 (2012) 339–368

This paper develops under-recognized connections between moderate historicist methodology and character (or virtue) epistemology, and goes on to argue that their combination supports a “dialectical” conception of objectivity. Considerations stemming from underdetermination problems motivate our claim that historicism requires agent-focused rather than merely belief-focused epistemology; embracing this point helps historicists avoid the charge of relativism. Considerations stemming from the genealogy of epistemic virtue concepts motivate our claim that character epistemologies are strengthened by moderate historicism about the epistemic virtues and values at work in communities of inquiry; embracing this point helps character epistemologists avoid the charge of objectivism. Keywords: historiography, virtue epistemology, naturalism, objectivity, thick concepts, underdetermination problem